Page 33 - Fables volume 3

Can his Spots Change the Leopard?

The Court of Last Resort heard Leopard’s appeal, despite his
attorney’s advice that his case was hopeless. Other interested parties,
primarily those creatures aware that any precedent established in this
decision would be of great personal importance, packed the Great
Hollow.
Leopard, uneasy among crowds, stayed close to Baboon, advocate
extraordinary. The rightness of his cause and the assurance by his
lawyer that legislation necessary to save the big cat could only be
triggered by a ruling in his favor exerted sufficient control to keep
him focused.
Nature showed its indifference to both the court and its litigant by
assigning Skink, a minor figure in the Justice Department, to
represent its interests. Learned Claw, a judge of vast erudition and
decades of experience on the bench, rapped smartly three times on a
coconut shell to start the proceedings.
Baboon addressed the court in solemn tones, holding his
trademark grandstanding theatrics in reserve.
“Your Honor, you have read the briefs and reviewed the lower
court’s decision. My client has made this appeal because that court
refused to consider the merits of this case as applicable within
Natural Law. If that judgement stands, the conservation status of his
species, at the present rate of population decline, will go from
threatened to extinction within five generations, the final two
representing captive breeding pairs. The importance of arresting and
reversing this trend goes beyond plaintiff’s self-interest: other Felidae
families are in similar—or worse—situations. In many cases it is their
spotted markings, ironically evolved for camouflage, which make
them targets for arbitrary assassination. We therefore request relief
based on a correct reading of the Law of Nature.”
The judge, an ancient Komodo dragon, flipped through
documentation already bearing signs of his keen attention. “Baboon,
I see your point here in section three, paragraph xii. It is true that
although extinction, both en masse with catastrophic suddenness and
at species level over thousands of years, is properly an uncontestable
component of our basic law, that constitution of macrocosm and

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